7 reasons you should read Qualitative Data Analysis with NVivo

Kath McNiff is a Technical Communicator at QSR. You can contact Kath on @KMcNiff. This post was originally published on the NVivo blog. You can read more by Kath and other NVivo bloggers by visiting http://blog.qsrinternational.com/

Somewhere on your computer there are articles to review and interviews to analyze. You also have survey results, a few videos and some social media conversations to contend with.

Where to begin?

Well, here’s one approach: Push a few buttons and bring everything into NVivo. Then dive head-first into your material and code the emerging themes. Become strangely addicted to coding and get caught up in a drag and drop frenzy. Then come up for air – only to be faced with 2000 random nodes and a supervisor/client demanding to know what it all means.

Or, you could do what successful NVivo users have been doing for the past six years – take a sip of your coffee and open Qualitative Data Analysis with NVivo.

This well-thumbed classic (published by SAGE) has been revised and updated by Pat Bazeley and co-author Kristi Jackson.

Here are 7 reasons why you should read it:

1. Pat and Kristi guide you through the research process and show you how NVivo can help at each stage. This means you learn to use NVivo and, at the same time, get an expert perspective on ‘doing qual’.
2. No matter what kind of source material you’re working with (text, audio, video, survey datasets or web pages)—this updated edition gives you sensible, actionable techniques for managing and analyzing the data.
3. The authors share practical coding strategies (gleaned from years of experience) and encourage you to develop good habits—keep a research journal, make models, track concepts with memos, don’t let your nodes go viral. Enjoy the ride.
4. The book is especially strong at helping you to think about (and setup) the ‘cases’ in your project—this might be the people you interviewed or the organizations you’re evaluating. Setting-up these cases and their attributes helps you to unleash the power of NVivo’s queries. How are different sorts of cases expressing an idea? Why does this group say one thing and this group another? What are the factors influencing these contrasts? Hey wait a minute, I just evolved my theme into a theory. Memo that.
5. If you’re doing a literature review in NVivo – chapter 8 is a gold mine (especially if you use NCapture to gather material from the web or if you use bibliographic software like EndNote.)
6. Each chapter outlines possible approaches, gives concrete examples and then provides step-by-step instructions (including screenshots) for getting things done. All in a friendly and approachable style.
7. This book makes a great companion piece to Pat’s other new text – Qualitative Data Analysis Practical Strategies. Read the ‘strategies’ book for a comprehensive look at the research process (in all its non-linear, challenging and exhilarating glory) and read this latest book to bring your project to life in NVivo. - See more at: http://blog.qsrinternational.com/qualitative-data-analysis-with-nvivo/#sthash.8odh8Olf.dpuf